Blowfish Strategies

As I sat on a pile of fishing nets waiting for Arul to arrive at his boat, I watched the fishermen emerge from the shadows of the village like mummies in the night and listened to one fishing boat after another start it’s diesel engine and head out to sea. It was 4:30 in the morning and I was tired, in awe of the situation, and out of place.

After Arul arrived I knew that I was out of place because fishermen kept coming up to him, pointing at me, exchanging some Tamil, and then shaking my hand and saying “hello, what country sir?” (possibly the only English they know). I was the only westerner on the beach and I’m sure most of them didn’t understand (probably like some of you reading the blog, I am not intending to insult anyone with this comment…..just a statement…..) why I’d want to go out fishing with them at 4:30am. Either way, after about twenty minutes of preparation, two shooting star sightings, and a beedie smoked with a fisherman, we (Arul, his father, his uncle, and myself) were on our way.

This was my first exposure to this type of fishing, which entailed slowly releasing a 1000 meter long, 1 meter high net, with weights on one side of the net and floaters on the other, while steering the boat in a straight line and then pulling the net in while pulling off whatever got caught in it. The idea behind this type of net is that the weighted end of the net will sink to the ocean floor while the floating part will remain 1 meter above the ocean floor, thus, catching any fish or other creatures that swim into it at that depth. After the net was dropped the first time, we waited for about five minutes so that there would be ample time to catch the first batch of fish/creatures. Besides this break, the only other time we weren’t working was when we stopped for 3 minutes to eat breakfast, which consisted of lemon rice and fish curry. Considering that this was my first meal of the day and that I don’t really like fish stews/curries/liquids that much, I can say with strong affirmation that it was very difficult to hold the fish curry in both my mouth and my stomach. I was successful in holding the food down by gulping water each time my mouth was full of food! Oh yeah, I forgot to say that somewhere in here the sun rose, which was absolutely gorgeous, and which made me want to get up every morning to go to the beach to see it……

While dropping the net into the water and pulling it back in may sound somewhat easy, it’s not. The first (and definite) reason that it’s not easy is that to do this on a daily basis, your fingers and arms need to be extremely strong and toned. I know this because mine aren’t, which is why when given the opportunity to participate, I had a difficult time pulling the net in! The second reason that this type of fishing isn’t easy is because there is an ongoing turf/sea war among the fishermen. Besides our boat, there had to be at least 60 other boats in the one square mile area that we were fishing in. The problem with this is that when you pull your net in, there is another fisherman dropping his net in the same exact place. In order to get around this, the fishermen only would pull up half of their net at a time. So, what they do is pull up half the net, re-drop the net after pulling off the fish/creatures, and then drive the boat to the far end of the net and do the same thing over again, thus, constantly moving back and forth between the ends of the net. I didn’t completely understand why the boats didn’t spread out more while fishing, as there were plenty of other areas which weren’t populated by boats. However, it my have been the case that the more nets dropped allowed less routes for escape by the fish/creatures, thus allowing for an increase in the average number of fish/creatures caught per fisherman. I guess it’s possible then, that it wasn’t a sea war, but a strategy?! Either way, considering that these guys fish for a living, I trust that there is a good reason behind the strategy of heavily populating the area

So, there is more I want to say about the fisherman’s strategy of beaching the boats, the sponsorship of certain boats by large corporations (who donated boats and materials post-tsunami (this was a village hit by the tsunami)), what it felt like being out on the ocean, a few miles from land affected by the tsunami and what it must have been like being on a fishing boat during the tsunami and coming back in not knowing that it happened, about the primitiveness of this fishing strategy compared to that in “the west” (with machines, big boats and engines, etc.) and how if they wanted, “the west” could a) assist these fisherman in updating their practices by donating boats and/or expertise or b) take over this industry and make a fortune….., and about the amazing physique of the fishermen, but, I don’t really have the energy to type more right now, nor do you have the energy/attention-span to read more (probably….). So, it’ll have to wait until I get home, so ask me about it in a few months if you want.

Fish/Creatures = Blowfish, Pufferfish, other fish varieties, spider crabs, sea horses, conch, sand sharks, prawns, eel, and crabs.

PS- I am going out on Arul’s boat tomorrow with him and some of his friends (just to hang out, not to fish, and I am going to go fishing again next week.

Stew Countdown = 7 days